"I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it." — William Faulkner

Monthly Archives: July 2010

Thanks to the slow, cold burn of Winter’s Bone and the mass-appeal of Inception, 2010 has become the year of the Neo-Noir Renaissance.

An Idea not spinning out of control...

The seeds for this renaissance were planted in 2007 when films that could not be categorized outright as neo-noir but were still “dark as hell” in theme and style (i.e. the dueling banjos that were There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men) left the most indelible impressions, if not on mass audiences, then on fellow filmmakers lurking in the shadows. In my yearly wrap-up, I specifically looked at the grim melodramas not nominated for Best Picture when I said, “Flicks like Zodiac, Eastern Promises, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, and Gone Baby Gone point towards a film movement not unlike the film noir of the 1940′s that mirrors America’s anxiety towards the chaotic outside world inward against the intimate settings of neighborhoods and families in stylish and unsettling ways.” But it wasn’t until 2010 that those seeds planted in 2007 bloomed.

It started in February, the coldest and most obscure of months — a time of year that is usually an artistic black-hole for film. Yet it was on the same weekend when two of filmdom’s greatest living masters delivered what appeared to be larks Continue reading →

Twelve years after Following, Christopher Nolan invites us to dream along with him through Inception. And while it’s operating on different levels than the Lang and Kubrick pieces, it shares in Hitchcock’s sense of dark fun and could easily be considered Nolan’s most ambitious and devilishly clever piece of work to date. He’s an auteur with a full blessing from the studio and his audience, and the project he devised in this rarefied air is awe-inspiring. Though there are some minor flaws, if you can’t find a way to overlook them and latch onto something meaningful in at least one layer of the dreams on display, then you have no business sitting in a darkened theater watching movies.

Christopher Nolan’s decked-out and high-concept new film brings new meaning to the idea of stealing ideas. In his futuristic universe, technology has developed where you can enter the mind of another through dream invasions and steal their ideas. It’s espionage…it’s dangerous…but what’s even more intriguing is the idea of diving deep into dreams within dreams and implanting an idea that can then spread like a virus and alter the shape of one’s universe. Whoever implanted this idea into Nolan’s mind, we thank you.

In preparation for the release of Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated and much ballyhooed Inception this Friday (stay tuned for a full report following the Thursday night 11:59pm advance showing I plan to attend), I decided to hold a mini-marathon here at the ‘Spin and take a look back on three of Nolan’s non-Gotham related works: Memento, Insomnia and The Prestige.

I make no apologies, and it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, that Nolan is one of my favorite working directors. It’s been uncanny how well he has been able to work within the mainstream studio system and deliver the type of dark, twisted, psychologically complex, crowd-pleasing and zeitgeist-tapping films people crave in the new millennium. It’s always interesting to do retrospectives of auteurs as you can witness over the course of a few nights the birth of their art, the refinement of their techniques and the emergence of their recurring themes.

The building was an older one, just a block from Wall Street in the heart of Manhattan’s Financial District, and its modest ten stories were dwarfed by towering modern skyscrapers. The rooftop offered an amazing 360-panoramic view of the cavernous buildings that stretched into the clouds. Their lit windows made checkered patterns against the enclosing walls of the city. Looking out between the buildings was like gazing into the belly of a deep and narrow cave that stretched back forever into a darkness around the bend.

A grim view from a ferry taken from Jersey City to Manhattan.

About two years ago I made it one of my primary missions to hone my skills working in short fiction. It was an area I had avoided and feared before (I am “davethenovelist” not “davetheshortstorywriter” afterall) but I decided it could be a welcome change of pace and something I could really dive into between novels. It’s resulted in many stories and ideas, some of which I’ve now discarded or still linger to be fully fleshed out, others of which I have edited to death and/or submitted in various drafts to select literary magazines in print or online. Along my journey, I read somewhere that the average writer will make at least 20 submissions before having their first story published. Well, on the 13th try, I am finally seeing some returns on my investments of time and hard work.

I am proud to say my short story, “The Ballerina in Battery Park” has been chosen for publication and awarded 3rd place in Scratch’s 2010 Spring Quarterly Contest. In addition to immediate online publication it will be appearing in print in their annual anthology due out in the Spring of 2011 – stay tuned for details on how to purchase a copy!